


A Series of Firsts

by ImpishTubist



Series: Red Sky in Morning [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpishTubist/pseuds/ImpishTubist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three milestones in a relationship, experienced in three unconventional ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Series of Firsts

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing.
> 
> Written by request - a fic for all of the firsts mentioned in "Married Ones."

I.

On Lestrade’s list of Ways To Spend A Saturday Afternoon, _Reading a book_ was near the top.

So was _Going for a run_ and _Watching crap telly_ and, most recently, _In bed with Sherlock._

 _Hanging onto the back of a moving vehicle_ was most certainly near the bottom, right before _Chasing velociraptors_ and _Standing in the same room with Sherlock while he conducts an experiment_.

And at this point, Lestrade would actually prefer the dinosaurs.

“Drink.”

 _“What?”_

The van swerved violently. With one hand, Lestrade made a grab for Sherlock’s shirt to prevent him from falling off; with the other, he kept hold of a bar jutting out from the back of the vehicle.

“Drink!” the detective bellowed at him as he worked, with his left hand, to pick the lock on the van’s hatch. That was the one thing they had going for them, the fact that the back of this van was not simply two doors but rather a hatch that came down halfway and swung up when it was opened. It was only then that the two short doors below could swing out, and in that way ensured that when Sherlock did get the lock open, one or the other of them would not be flung off the back of the vehicle.

“Drink what?” he called over the rush of air about his face.

They hit a bump; Lestrade smacked his head against the door.

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about?” he added when the ringing in his ears stopped.

“We should go for a drink,” Sherlock bellowed over the wind. He gave a final twist of his wrist, and the lock opened. He threw open the back hatch with only the barest of warnings to Lestrade and hauled himself inside, up and over the divider like an acrobat. And then pale hands were reaching for Lestrade, pulling him in too, and a moment later he was sprawled on the floor of the inside of the van, Sherlock pinned beneath him.

“Did you -” he gasped in a louder voice than was necessary in the sudden silence, the pounding of the wind gone, “ - did you just ask me out?”

“Yes, do pay attention,” Sherlock said irritably.

“This couldn’t have waited for, I dunno, a better time?” Lestrade hissed.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because this is a sensitive case that requires my full attention, and I’m finding you quite distracting,” Sherlock snapped. “So give me an answer so that I can get on with my work. It’s _infuriating_ how much of my hard drive has become occupied with you.”

And Lestrade wasn’t sure if he was supposed to take that as a compliment or not, but he said, “God, yes,” anyway.

  
II.

"Well, this isn't the best idea you've ever had," Lestrade said dryly to Sherlock. They were taking refuge from a hail of bullets behind an overturned desk, and had the advantage of darkness in this shadowy corner of the warehouse. Their would-be shooters couldn’t see them, and were firing blindly in the hopes of hitting them anyway.

The suspects weren’t the most brilliant of men, that was for sure. But they had guns, whereas all Lestrade had was a pen in his breast pocket and his self-diagnosed sociopath of a detective/friend/lover.

He wasn’t too fond of those odds.

"In case you hadn't noticed, _I’m_ not the one firing on us," Sherlock hissed at him. "This is hardly my fault."

"Isn't it?" Lestrade snapped. "Remind me again, whose bright idea was it to follow a suspected _murderer_ into an abandoned warehouse, alone and unarmed? Did it even _occur_ to you that he might not’ve been working alone?"

“And who was the one who came after me?” Sherlock snapped back. “If you’d wanted to be out of danger so badly, you should have stayed at home. I can handle this.”

A bullet ricocheted off a nearby pillar. They froze for a moment, but then the next shot went wide and they realized they hadn’t yet been found.

“Or better yet,” Sherlock continued in a furious undertone, “you should find a different profession, seeing as this is too much for you.”

“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Lestrade muttered. The shots were dying down; he allowed himself to hope for a moment that their pursuers had given up on finding them.

“Yes, I would,” Sherlock said seriously, not picking up on the sarcasm. Lestrade blinked at him - or, rather, blinked in his general direction, as it was too dark to make out anything more than the general shape of the man sitting next to him.

“Sorry?”

“You know I loathe repeating myself; I won’t be saying it again.”

“Fine. Clarify then. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m _talking_ about,” Sherlock ground out, “you staying home. Staying safe.”

The gunfire started up again, but Lestrade was only partly paying attention to it. Sherlock, concerned over _his_ welfare?

“You’re a bloody idiot,” he muttered gruffly, and reached out blindly to grab Sherlock’s shirt and haul him in.

The kiss was sloppy and greedy, all lips and tongue and wandering hands, and _definitely_ not how he’d planned on it occurring. It shouldn’t have been all that surprising, kissing Sherlock bloody Holmes for the first time - the first _proper_ time -  in the middle of a gunfight.

It felt oddly right.

“Perhaps,” Sherlock said when they finally broke apart, slightly breathless. “But I’m _your_ bloody idiot. And I would prefer it to remain that way. I can’t be your _bloody idiot_ if you’re dead, now, can I?”

Lestrade heard him scoot back over to where he’d been crouched, and then came the sound of rustling clothes prior to the _click_ of a weapon.

 _Bloody hell_.

“And that’s why, Inspector,” Sherlock continued calmly, “I didn’t come in unarmed.”

  
III.

Lestrade’s mobile had been going off in his pocket every few moments for the past fifteen minutes, vibrating irritatingly against his leg. He couldn’t take the time to check the messages, though, and hoped that whatever it was would turn out to be _damn_ important for all the annoyance it was causing him.

He finally got a moment to step away from the crime scene, and fished out his mobile to find that he had missed three calls and one text - all from John. He opened the text, and the words on his screen stopped him cold.

 _Call immediately._

“What happened?” he demanded the moment John picked up.

“What do you think?” John’s voice was tinged with exhaustion and concern. “Sherlock went and did something idiotic again. We’re at the hospital right now. He shattered his arm.”

“He _what?_ ”

“He’s fine,” John assured quickly. “They’ve got him on an immense amount of painkillers and the arm’s stable. He’s waiting to be fit into the surgery schedule.”

“What happened?”

John sighed over the line. “He was off on a case for a private client. I don’t know all the details, but it went wrong somehow -”

“ Of course,” Lestrade grumbled.

“ - and he was ambushed. Took a heavy beating in addition to them messing up his arm. Oh, hold on -”

John’s head turned away from the phone, and Lestrade heard a quiet murmur of voices.

“He says he can hear you worrying from all the way over here,” John said, coming back on the line, “and that if you so much as think of abandoning your case to come visit him, he’s going to start keeping body parts in your fridge again.”

“And just when I thought I’d broken him of that habit, too,” Lestrade said, attempting a weak joke to offset the worry that had coiled in his stomach. “Look, John, I don’t think I could even get away if I wanted. It’s - well, I can’t talk about it, but we’ve got a helluva case that landed in our laps this morning. Can you - I mean, is it all right -?”

“I’ll keep you updated,” John said, reading his thoughts. “Even if there’s no news, I’ll text or call a few times an hour. I’m not scheduled to go into the surgery again until Wednesday, so I can sit with him.”

“Thank you,” Lestrade breathed. “And - and tell him -”

He stopped, but John, (thank God), knew where he’d been going.

“Don’t worry,” he said, a small smile in his voice, “he knows.”

  
Sherlock was taken into surgery a few hours later, just as Lestrade and his team were wrapping up at the crime scene. The rest of the day was an agony of waiting, and each text from John - _still in surgery_ \- did little to ease the knot his stomach had tied itself into. Dinnertime rolled around, and as the Yard emptied Lestrade holed himself up in his office with Donovan and Anderson, going over all that they knew about the case - which was frighteningly little, and what they did have was of no help to them.

A text came in just after eight - _Out of surgery. Resting now._

He breathed a little easier.

Eventually Lestrade sent his two officers home, and with dismay cast an eye over the clutter on his desk. He mentally ran through his schedule for tomorrow - meetings, paperwork, cases - and tried to decide the minimum amount he could afford to get done tonight and still be able to get through the next day without floundering.

He thought of Sherlock, who would absolutely kill him if he knew Lestrade abandoned the work for him.

He thought of Sherlock, who had drawn him in so quickly that it made his head spin. He had fallen, and hard, and _God_ was it terrifying.

He thought of Sherlock.

Twenty minutes later, Lestrade was at the hospital and announcing himself quietly at the door to Sherlock’s room with a soft rap of knuckles against the warm wood. He pushed it open, and glanced inside.

John was sitting by the bed, awake still, a crossword open on his knee and gnawing on the end of a pen. He looked up and, spotting Lestrade, gave a two-fingered wave.

“Thought you were going to be working tonight,” he said softly, though Sherlock was quite obviously dead to the world. His pieced-together arm was, Lestrade could see, held immobile by pins and wires and a complicated brace. Lestrade moved to stand on the other side of the bed, opposite John.

“I could get away for a few hours,” he lied, and then dropped his gaze to his sleeping ...friend. “Hell, Sherlock.”

He bent down over the prone figure and pressed his lips to Sherlock’s forehead. It was covered in a thin sheen of sweat and, up close, Lestrade could feel a good deal of heat radiating off the lithe man.

“It’s the anesthesia,” John explained, spotting his concern. “It’s working its way out of his system. He’ll likely be running a fever for a day or so.”

Lestrade pressed the back of his hand to Sherlock’s forehead, winced in sympathy, and kissed him again before going to find a chair.

“Here,” John offered quickly. “Take mine. Are you going to be here for a bit?”

Lestrade nodded.

“I think I’ll head back to Baker Street, if that’s all right.” John pulled around his chair, and Lestrade sat gratefully. “Shower, change, you know. Can I bring you anything? Have you eaten?”

“I’m fine, John,” Lestrade said finally. “Thank you, though.”

“He likely won’t wake for another several hours,” John said before he left. “Just so you’re aware.”

He had failed to take into account, though, that this was Sherlock, and not more than an hour after he left the detective was blinking open his eyes and staring in confusion at Lestrade.

“Hello, there,” Lestrade said softly, unfurling himself from the uncomfortable chair and leaning forward so he was within Sherlock’s field of vision without detective having to move his head. “What’re you doing awake so soon?”

Sherlock licked dry lips, and murmured, “Les...”

“Yeah, ‘at’s me,” Lestrade said thickly. “How d’you feel?”

It wasn’t the wisest of questions, but he needed to say _something_. And it unnerved him to see Sherlock like this - in pain, groggy, not in control of his senses or his body. He couldn’t imagine how it felt for Sherlock to experience. Hellish, he imagined.

“Need -” Sherlock whispered, and stopped. He blinked several times, and his eyes slid closed. He looked to be drawing on the last of his reserves. “Need - to get to - lab.”

“Ah, no, I don’t think so. You’re in hospital. D’you remember?”

Sherlock cracked open an eye; squinted at him.

“‘strade?” he mumbled.

 _Oh, dear_.

“Yeah, I’m here.” Lestrade moved from the chair to perch on the bed, and he cupped Sherlock’s face in one hand, brushing his thumb along the man’s jaw. “D’you know why you’re here?”

A slow shake of the head.

“That’s not surprising,” Lestrade said, more to himself than anything else. “It’ll come back. You were in surgery, and they’ve got you on painkillers. You’ll be fuzzy for a while yet, I’m afraid.”

Sherlock frowned, and his eyes roved around the room for a moment before settling back on Lestrade. He could see the thoughts blooming behind Sherlock’s eyes, could see the struggle as he tried to find the proper words to express what was in his mind.

“I know,” he murmured, stroking the stubbled skin in what he hoped was a soothing manner. “You hate this. It’s why you avoid hospitals in the first place. The medicine makes it hard to think.”

He ducked his head to brush his lips across Sherlock’s brow. “It’ll be over soon. Promise.”

Sherlock murmured something.

“What was that, sunshine?” Lestrade bent low over Sherlock, and the words were repeated into his ear. He straightened, giving his disoriented lover a sad smile and resisted repeating the sentiment. Instead he said, “Why don’t you tell me that in the morning, yeah? When you’re not high on morphine.”

He pressed his lips to Sherlock’s forehead. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”  
   
 


End file.
